


Basic

by AoifeMoran



Category: Memoir - Fandom, Original Work
Genre: Memoirs, Military, Military Training
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-10
Updated: 2019-05-10
Packaged: 2020-02-29 14:49:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 489
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18780466
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AoifeMoran/pseuds/AoifeMoran
Summary: A snippet from a memoir I might write someday.





	Basic

“Our school,” says the lady from the admissions office, “is highly selective,” and begins reciting acceptance statistics, graduation percentages and names of colleges alumni went on to study at as my mom listens raptly. I scuff my shoes against a carpet that was probably vibrant once, but is now a uniformly drab grey. The conversation doesn’t seem nearly as important as it turns out to be.

For the next five years, my life is shaped by this highly selective high school. My friends, all veterans of this city’s myriad gifted and talented programs. My teachers, all bright experts in their fields. My anxieties, all stemming from one question that no one seems to know how to answer: “Am I good enough?”

Am I good enough, smart enough, talented enough, individual enough to have a place at this school, and earn a place at a college, and make a name for myself in the world? (Three years later, a friend texts me a link to the wikipedia article on Impostor Syndrome and writes, “omg aoife its us”. I read the article and cry.)

I decide I’m probably not good enough, and faced with the fear of failure if I apply to colleges and don’t get in, I choose instead to move back to the barely remembered country of my birth, Israel, and enlist in the military.

You can’t fail in the military, I reason to myself. Especially not in Israel. Everyone drafts, after all, and they teach you everything you need to know in Basic Training.

My naive image is shattered the moment I grab my kitbag, put on my uniform and get on the bus to Basic. The sergeant shouts something I can’t parse and hands out paperwork that my elementary Hebrew doesn’t cover. All at once, the overwhelming sense of failure that accompanied me throughout high school comes back, familiar and heavy.

Then the girl sitting next to me sees the distressed look on my face and asks if I need help.

The question takes me aback. Help? Willingly offered? With no judgement attached? It goes against almost everything I had learned in high school: you have to pull yourself up by your own bootstraps, you can’t show weakness, you can’t let anyone know you find something less than easy, you must at all times be the precocious, well-rounded, child prodigy.

I swallow my pride, feeling tears start to form in the corners of my eyes. “Yeah,” I tell her. “I need help.”

Later, when I’ve finished Basic Training, and Officer Training, and managed a staff of some twenty soldiers for a year, a new recruit asks me, “what’s the coolest thing you’ve learned to do in all your service?” She probably expects something like operating a radar, or how to shoot an M4.

“How to ask for help,” I tell her instead.

It turns out they really do teach you everything you need to know, in Basic.


End file.
